The most important IT career skills aren't necessarily technical. Communication, negotiation, team-building and conflict resolution are all critical to IT success, especially in leadership positions. Credit: Thinkstock With IT sector unemployment at its lowest rate in seven years, it’s a seller’s market for professionals with technology skills. However, it takes more than just hard-core technical knowledge to get ahead in IT departments. While skills and hands-on technical experience are required for any IT professional, some of the most important contributors to a successful IT career have nothing to do with speeds and feeds or bytes and bits. The Value of Soft Skills Technology pros who also have the ability to communicate effectively, negotiate conflict, work well in teams and are adaptable to the ever-changing needs of a dynamic market are much more valuable to their organizations, especially at the managerial and executive level, says Matt Brosseau, director of Information Technology, Instant Alliance, a recruiting, staffing and consulting firm based in Chicago. “I would argue that soft skills, like communication, empathy, teamwork and negotiation are almost more important than technical skills, especially in leadership or executive roles. Technologists who have these soft skills are better able to understand and accurately convey the business value of IT projects to other, non-technical stakeholders, get their buy-in and support and deliver more successful projects,” Brosseau says. Soft Skills Drive Engagement and Retention There’s a direct relationship between soft skills and workers’ effectiveness, and greater effectiveness on the job translates to better overall business results, says Kevin King, founder and CEO of Transformation Point, a management consulting and assessment firm, in a recent webcast for Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). “A higher degree of soft-skills competency brings improved effectiveness and improved organizational results, and that in turn drives greater employee engagement and retention,” says King, two top priorities for businesses today, according to the State of the American Workplace survey from Gallup. “When people work more efficiently and effectively together, that means their organizations see better results and they’re more likely to stay,” King says. Soft Skills Are Hard to Find But even as engagement and retention become more important, the soft skills that can help increase those metrics become harder to find. SHRM’s 2014 survey of economic conditions and recruiting skills gaps found that the 2,583 respondents cited critical thinking/problem-solving (40 percent), professionalism/work ethic (38 percent), leadership (34 percent) and written communications (27 percent) as the top four applied skills gaps. Experts agree that technical skills can be taught much more easily than soft skills. If you have workers with great communication, negotiation and interpersonal skills, hold onto them. “You can have the best technology and processes in the world, but if your people aren’t able to communicate about them, if they aren’t effectively demonstrating teamwork, critical thinking and emotional intelligence, it doesn’t help your business succeed,” he says. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe